Science Comes Alive

Category archives for Science Comes Alive

I had occasion this week to tell friends the story of my maternal grandmother. She was born in 1906 in an eastern Pennsylvania coal mining town. Her family was so poor that she was sent at age 16 to northern New Jersey to clean houses for wealthy families. She gave me pictures of her from…

Scott Hensley, editor of the WSJ Health Blog, just reminded me that his colleague and blog lead writer, Jacob Goldstein, put together a neat slideshow on the fluorescent marine proteins for which this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded. I’ve been a bit behind in my reading of other blogs so it was refreshing…

[Hi Mom. Will call you soon but you really need not read this post. Love, Your son.] Bora/Coturnix just alerted me to the FDA approval of a home sperm-check test that can be used to determine the effectiveness of one’s vasectomy. The product, SpermCheck Vasectomy, was developed by Dr John C Kerr and fellow researchers…

Back in January several science bloggers had an exchange that degenerated into discussion of the process and aftermath of the vasectomy. Well, as PhysioProf is wont to say, today I will sack up, literally. As part of my gift to PharmGirl for her [significant] bday next week I will undergo the knife this afternoon to…

Via Will’s Clicked, a Spanish TV show on science and technology demonstrates the “shear-thickening” property of a non-Newtonian fluid (i.e., where rapid application of forces causes the fluid to behave like a solid). Pretty cool – watch what happens around 1:49 when one of the hosts stands still atop the muck.